Penny Plain/Chapter 8

RS. DUFF-WHALLEY was giving a dinner-party. This was no uncommon occurrence, for she loved to entertain. It gave her real pleasure to provide a good meal and to see her guests enjoy it. "Besides," as she often said, "what's the use of having everything solid for the table, and a fine house and a cook at sixty pounds a year, if nobody's any the wiser?"

It will be seen from this remark that Mrs. Duff-Whalley had not always been in a position to give dinner-parties; indeed, Mrs. Hope, that terror to the newly risen, who traced everyone back to their first rude beginnings (generally "a wee shop"), had it that the late Mr. Duff-Whalley had begun life as a "Johnnie-a'-things" in Leith, and that his wife had been his landlady's daughter.

But the "wee shop" was in the dim past, if, indeed, it had ever existed except in Mrs. Hope's wicked, wise old head, and for many years Mrs. Duff-Whalley had ruffled it in a world that asked no questions about the origin of money so obviously there.

Most people are weak when they come in contact with a really strong-willed woman. No one liked Mrs. Duff-Whalley, but few, if any, withstood her advances. It was easier to give in and be on calling and dining terms than to repulse a woman who never noticed a snub, and who would never admit the possibility that she might not be wanted. So Mrs. Duff-Whalley could boast with some degree of truth that she knew "everybody," and entertained at The Towers "very nearly the highest in the land."

The dinner-party I write of was not one of her more ambitious efforts. It was a small and (with the exception of one guest) what she called "a purely local affair." That is to say, the people who were to grace the feast were culled from the big villas on the Hill, and were not "county."

Mrs. Duff-Whalley was an excellent manager, and left nothing to chance. She saw to all the details herself. Dressed and ready quite half an hour before the time fixed for dinner, she had cast her eagle glance over the dinner-table, and now sailed into the drawing-room to see that the fire was at its best, the chairs comfortably disposed, and everything as it should be. Certainly no one could have found fault with the comfort of the room this evening. A huge fire blazed in the most approved style of grate, the electric light (in the latest fittings) also blazed, lighting up the handsome oil-paintings that adorned the walls, the many photographs, the china in the cabinets, the tables with their silver treasures. Everywhere stood vases of heavy-scented hothouse flowers. Mrs. Duff-Whalley approved of hothouse flowers; she said they gave a tone to a room.

The whole room glittered, and its mistress glittered with it as she moved about in a dress largely composed of sequins, a diamond necklace, and a startling ornament in her hair.

She turned as the door opened and her daughter came into the room, and looked her carefully up and down. She was a pretty girl dressed in the extreme of fashion, and under each arm she carried a tiny barking dog.

Muriel was a good daughter to her mother, and an exemplary character in every way, but the odd thing was that few people liked her. This was the more tragic as it was the desire of her heart to be popular. Her appearance was attractive, and strangers usually began acquaintance with enthusiasm, but the attraction rarely survived the first hour's talk. She was like a very well-coloured and delightful-looking apple that is without flavour. She was never natural—always aping someone. Her enthusiasms did not ring true, her interest was obviously feigned, and she had that most destroying of social faults, she could not listen with patience, but let her attention wander to the conversation of her neighbours. It seemed as if she could never talk at peace with anyone for fear of missing something more interesting in another quarter.

"You look very nice, Muriel! I'm glad I told you to put on that dress, and that new way of doing your hair is very becoming." One lovable thing about Mrs. Duff-Whalley was the way she sincerely and openly admired everything that was hers. "Now, see and do your best to make the evening go. Mr. Elliot takes a lot of amusing, and the Jowetts aren't very lively either."

"Is that all that's coming?" Muriel asked.

"I asked the new Episcopalian parson—what's his name?—yes—Jackson—to fill up."

"You don't often descend to the clergy, mother."

"No, but Episcopalians are slightly better fitted for society than Presbyterians, and this young man seems quite a gentleman—such a blessing, too, when they haven't got wives. Dear, dear, I told Dickie not to send in any more of that plant—what d'you call it?" (It was a peculiarity of Mrs. Duff-Whalley that she never could remember the names of any but the simplest flowers.) "I don't like its perfume. What was I saying? Of course, I only got up this dinner on the spur of the moment, so to speak, when I met Mr. Elliot in the Highgate. He comes and goes so much you never know when he's at Laverlaw; if you write or telephone he's always got another engagement. But when I met him face to face I just said, 'Now, when will you dine with us, Mr. Elliot?' and he hummed and hawed a bit and then fixed to-night."

"Perhaps he didn't want to come," Muriel suggested as she snuggled one of the small dogs against her face. "And did it love its own mummy, then, darling snub-nose pet?"

Her mother scouted the idea.

"Why should he not want to come? Do put down those dogs, Muriel. I never get used to see you kissing them. A good dinner and everything comfortable, and you to play the piano to him taught by the best masters—he's ill to please. And he's not very well off, though he does own Laverlaw. It's the time the family has been there that gives him the standing. I must say, he isn't in the least genial, but he gets that from his mother. A starchier old woman I never met. I remember your father and I were staying at the Hydro when old Elliot died, and his son was killed before that, shooting lions or something in Africa, so this Lewis Elliot, who was a nephew, inherited. We thought we would go and ask if by any chance they wanted to sell the place, so we called in a friendly way, though we didn't know them, of course. It was old Mrs. Elliot we saw, and my word, she was cold. As polite as you like, but as icy as the North Pole. Your father had some vulgar sayings I couldn't break him off, and he said as we drove out of the lodge gates, 'Well, that old wife gave us our heads in our laps and our lugs to play wi'.'"

"Why, mother!" Muriel cried, astonished. Her mother was never heard to use a Scots expression and thought even a Scots song slightly vulgar.

"I know—I know," said Mrs. Duff-Whalley hastily. "It just came over me for a minute how your father said it. He was a very amusing man, your father, very bright to live with, though he was too fond of low Scots expressions for my taste; and he would eat cheese to his tea. It kept us down, you know. I've risen a lot in the world since your father left us, though I miss him, of course. He used to laugh at Minnie's ideas. It was Minnie got us to send Gordon to an English school and then to Cambridge, and take the hyphen. Your father had many a laugh at the hyphen, and before the servants too! You see, Minnie went to a high-class school and made friends with the right people, and learned how things should be done. She had always assurance, had Minnie. The way she could order the waiters about in those grand London hotels! And then she married Egerton-Thomson. But you're better-looking, Muriel."

Muriel brushed aside the subject of her looks.

"What made you settle in Priorsford?" she asked.

"Well, we came out first to stay at the Hydro—you were away at school then—and your father took a great fancy to the place. He was making money fast, and we always had a thought of buying a place. But there was nothing that just suited us. We thought it would be too dull to be right out in the country, at the end of a long drive—exclusive you know, but terribly dreary, and then your father said, 'Build a house to suit ourselves in Priorsford, and we'll have shops and a station and everything quite near.' His idea was to have a house as like a hydropathic as possible, and to call it The Towers. 'A fine big red house, Aggie,' he often said to me, 'with plenty of bow-windows and turrets and a hothouse off the drawing-room and a sweep of gravel in front and a lot of geraniums and those yellow flowers—what d'you call 'em?—and good lawns, and a flower garden and a kitchen garden and a garage, and what more d'you want?' Well, well, he got them all, but he didn't live long to enjoy them. I think myself that having nothing to do but take his meals killed him. I hear wheels! That'll be the Jowetts. They're always so punctual. Am I all right?"

Muriel assured her that nothing was wrong or lacking, and they waited for the guests.

The door opened and a servant announced, "Mr. and Mrs. Jowett."

Mrs. Jowett walked very slowly and delicately, and her husband pranced behind her. It might have been expected that in their long walk together through life Mr. Jowett would have got accustomed to his wife's deliberate entrances, but no—it always seemed as if he were just on the point of giving her an impatient push from behind.

She was a gentle-looking woman with soft, white hair and a pink-and-white complexion—the sort of woman one always associates with old lace. In her youth it was said that she had played the harp, and one felt that the "grave, sweet melody" would have well become her. She was dressed in pale shades of mauve, and had a finely finished look. The Indian climate and curries had affected Mr. Jowett's liver, and made his temper fiery, but his heart remained the sound, childlike thing it had always been. He quarrelled with everybody (though never for long), but people in trouble gravitated to him naturally, and no one had ever asked him anything in reason and been refused; children loved him.

Mr. Jackson, the Episcopalian clergyman, followed hard behind the Jowetts, and was immediately engaged in an argument with Mr. Jowett as to whether or not choral communion, which had recently been started and which Mr. Jowett resented, as he resented all new things, should be continued.

"Ridiculous!" he shouted—"utterly ridiculous! You will drive the people from the church, sir."

Then Mr. Elliot arrived. Mrs. Duff-Whalley greeted him impressively, and dinner was announced.

Lewis Elliot was a man of forty-five, tall and thin and inclined to stoop. He had shortsighted blue eyes and a shy, kind smile. He was not a sociable man, and resented being dragged from his books to attend a dinner-party. Like most people he was quite incapable of saying No to Mrs. Duff-Whalley when that lady desired an answer in the affirmative, but he had condemned himself roundly to himself as a fool as he drove down the glen from Laverlaw.

Mrs. Duff-Whalley always gave a long and pretentious meal, and expected everyone to pay for their invitation by being excessively bright and chatty. It was not in the power of the present guests to be either the one thing or the other. Mrs. Jowett was pensive and sweet, and inclined to be silent; her husband gave loud barks of disagreement at intervals; Mr. Jackson enjoyed his dinner and answered when spoken to, while Lewis Elliot was rendered almost speechless by the flood of talk his hostess poured over him.

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Elliot," she remarked in a pause, "that the people I wanted to meet you couldn't come. I asked Sir John and Lady Tweedie, but they were engaged—so unfortunate, for they are such an acquisition. Then I asked the Olivers, and they couldn't come. You would really wonder where the engagements come from in this quiet neighbourhood." She gave a little unbelieving laugh. "I had evidently chosen an unfortunate evening for the County."

It was trying for everyone: for Mr. Elliot, who was left with the impression that people were apt to be engaged when asked to meet him; for the Jowetts, who now knew that they had received a "fiddler's bidding," and for Mr. Jackson, who felt that he was only there because nobody else could be got.

There was a blank silence, which Lewis Elliot broke by laughing cheerfully. "That absurd rhyme came into my head," he explained. "You know:

Then, feeling suddenly that he had not improved matters, he fell silent.

"Oh," said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, rearing her head like an affronted hen, "the difficulty, I assure you, is not to find guests but to decide which to select."

"Quite so, quite so, naturally," murmured Mr. Jackson soothingly; he had laughed at the rhyme and felt apologetic. Then, losing his head completely under the cold glance his hostess turned on him, he added, "Go ye into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in."

Mrs. Jowett took a bit of toast and broke it nervously. She was never quite at ease in Mrs. Duff-Whalley's company. Incapable of an unkind thought or a bitter word, so refined as to be almost inaudible, she felt jarred and bumped in her mind after a talk with that lady, even as her body would have felt after bathing in a rough sea among rocks. Realising that the conversation had taken an unfortunate turn, she tried to divert it into more pleasing channels.

Turning to Mr. Jackson, she said: "Such a sad thing happened to-day. Our dear old dog, Rover, had to be put away. He was sixteen, very deaf and rather cross, and the Vet. said it wasn't kind to keep him; and of course after that we felt there was nothing to be said. The Vet. said he would come this morning at ten o'clock, and it quite spoilt my breakfast, for dear Rover sat beside me and begged, and I felt like an executioner; and then he went out for a walk by himself—a thing he hadn't done since he had become frail—and when the Vet. came there was no Rover."

"Dear, dear!" said Mr. Jackson, helping himself to an entrée.

"The really dreadful thing about it," continued Mrs. Jowett, refusing the entrée, "was that Johnston—the gardener, you know—had dug the grave where I had chosen he should lie, dear Rover, and—you have heard the expression, Mr. Jackson—a yawning grave? Well, the grave yawned. It was too heartrending. I simply went to my room and cried, and Tim went in one direction and Johnston in another, and the maids looked too, and they found the dear doggie, and the Vet.—a most obliging man called Davidson—came back … and dear Rover is at rest."

Mrs. Jowett looked sadly round and found that the whole table had been listening to the recital.

Few people have not loved a dog and known the small tragedy of parting with it when its all too short day was over, and even the "lamentable comedy" of Mrs. Jowett's telling of the tale made no one smile.

Muriel leant forward, genuinely distressed. "I'm so frightfully sorry, Mrs. Jowett; you'll miss dear old Rover dreadfully."

"It's a beastly business putting away a dog," said Lewis Elliot. "I always wish they had the same lease of life as we have. 'Threescore and ten years do sum up' … and it's none too long for such faithful friends."

"You must get another, Mrs. Jowett," her hostess told her bracingly. "Get a dear little toy Pekinese or one of those Japanese what-do-you-call-'ems that you can carry in your arms: they are so smart."

"If you do, Janetta," her husband warned her, "you must choose between the brute and me. I refuse to live in the same house with one of those pampered, trifling little beasts. If we decide to fill old Rover's place I suggest that we get a rough-haired Irish terrier." He rolled the "r's" round his tongue. "Something robust that can bark and chase cats, and not lie all day on a cushion, like one of those dashed Chinese …" His voice died away in muttered thunder.

Again Mrs. Duff-Whalley reared her head, but Muriel interposed, laughing. "You mustn't really be so severe, Mr. Jowett. I happen to possess two of the 'trifling beasts,' and you must come and apologise to them after dinner. You can't imagine more perfect darlings, and of course they are called Bing and Toutou. You won't be able to resist their little sweet faces—too utterly darling!"

"Shan't I?" said Mr. Jowett doubtfully. "Well, I apologise. Nobody likes to hear their dog miscalled…. By the way, Jackson, that's an abominable brute of yours. Bit three milk-girls and devastated the Scotts' hen-house last week, I hear."

"Yes," said Mr. Jackson. "Four murdered fowls they brought to me, and I had to pay for them; and they didn't give me the corpses, which I felt was too bad."

"What?" said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, deeply interested. "Did you actually pay for the damage done and let them keep the fowls?"

"I did," Mr. Jackson owned gloomily, and the topic lasted until the fruit was handed round.

"I wonder," said Mrs. Jowett to her hostess, as she peeled a pear, "if you have met a newcomer in Priorsford—Miss Reston? She has taken Miss Bathgate's rooms."

"You mean the Honourable Pamela Reston? She is a daughter of the late Lord Bidborough of Bidborough Manor, Surrey, and Mintern Abbas, Oxfordshire, and sister of the present peer: I looked her up in Debrett. I called on her, feeling it my duty to be civil to a stranger, but it seems to me a very odd thing that a peer's daughter would care to live in such a humble way. Mark my words, there's something shady about it. As likely as not, she's an absconding lady's-maid—but a call commits one to nothing. She was out anyway, so I didn't see her."

"Oh, indeed," said Mrs. Jowett, blushing pink, "Miss Reston is no impostor. When you have seen her you will realise that. I met her yesterday at the Jardines'. She is the most delightful creature, so charming to look at, so wonderfully graceful——"

"I think," said Lewis Elliot, "that that must be the Pamela Reston I used to know. Did you say she was living in Priorsford?"

"Yes, in a cottage called Hillview, next to The Rigs, you know," Mrs. Jowett explained. "Mhor made friends with her whenever she arrived, and took her in to see Jean. You can imagine how attractive she found the whole household."

"The Jardines are very unconventional," said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, "if you call that attractive. Jean doesn't know how to keep her place with people at all. I saw her walking beside a tinker woman the other day, helping her with her bundle; and I'm sure I've simply had to give up calling at The Rigs, for you never knew who you would have to shake hands with. I'm sorry for Jean, poor little soul. It seems a pity that there is no one to dress her and give her a chance. She's a plain little thing at best, but clothes might do wonders for her."

"There I totally disagree," shouted Mr. Jowett. "Jean, to my mind, is the best-looking girl in Priorsford. She walks so well and has such an honest, jolly look. I'm glad there's no one to dress her and make an affected doll of her…. She's the kind of girl a man would like to have for a daughter."

"But what," asked Mrs. Duff-Whalley, "can Miss Reston have in common with people like the Jardines? I don't believe they have more than £300 a year, and such a plain little house, and one queer old servant. Miss Reston must be accustomed to things so very different. We must ask her here to meet some of the County."

"The County!" growled Mr. Jowett. "Except for Elliot here, and the Hopes and the Tweedies and the Olivers, there are practically none of the old families left. I tell you what it is——"

But Mrs. Duff-Whalley had had enough for the moment of Mr. Jowett's conversation, so she nodded to Mrs. Jowett, and with an arch admonition to the men not to stay too long, she swept the ladies before her to the drawing-room.